Mystery solved: Chris Evans was refering to Sir Anthony Bamford:
Aston Martin had always been slightly offhand about its association with the Bond franchise, however. The connection with the original Ian Fleming novels was tenuous, since while Fleming had Bond borrow a battleship-grey Secret Service ‘pool car’ DB MkIII in Goldfinger, Bond’s own car was a Bentley – supercharged 4-litre in the early books, Continental Mk2 in the later ones. These big machines were too cumbersome for the film makers to contemplate but the newly introduced DB5 would be ideal for their interpretation of a 1960s Bond; the trouble was that Aston, going through one of its perennial financial crises, was unwilling to provide a car free of charge, and the bean-counters at the studio wouldn’t countenance actually buying one. Only after intensive lobbying by special effects man John Stears did Aston relent and agree to loan out BMT 216A which, after all, had already been put through the mill as a development car.
By the late 1960s the value of the Bond DB5s to Aston Martin’s international image had been proven again and again, yet Aston was still apparently oblivious to the mobile goldmines it had stashed away in the works. In 1969 it sold the brace of Show Cars, 2008 and 2017, for a mere £1500 to Anthony (now Sir Anthony) Bamford of JCB excavator fame. If that was a bargain, then Sir Anthony was doubly lucky when a Mr Kenneth Luscombe-Whyte offered to swap one for a Ferrari 250GTO! Realising that a GTO for £750 was quite a good deal, even in 1969, Sir Anthony accepted the offer and traded the Show Car 2017. He still has the GTO today.
Luscombe-Whyte kept 2017 for only a few months before selling it on, and after a long spell as a curiosity at a Canadian restaurant it ended up at its present resting place in the Dutch National Motor Museum. Luscombe-Whyte had some fun with the car during his short tenure, however: he would occasionally park it in central London, wait until a traffic warden had made a note of the number, then operate the revolving number plates when the warden was out of sight and hide until the warden returned to find an apparently identical Aston Martin with a different registration in the same spot!
Sir Anthony Bamford held onto his other Bond car, 2008, for a couple more years before selling it in 1971 for £5000 to Bruce Atchley’s Smoky Mountain Car Museum in Tennessee. It’s been there ever since, which has ensured its survival in a remarkable state of preservation. Total mileage is still only 18,000 and the car wears its original paint, albeit with a few minor scars and blisters. Most of the ‘extras’ such as the extending over-riders and bulletproof screen are in working condition, although the oil sprayer and smokescreen layer have not been tried out. RM Auctions reckons the car will fetch up to .5 million when it’s sold, which is not inconceivable given that this DB5 has to be the ultimate ‘big boy’s toy’.
And what of the fourth Bond car? It still exists and has been in the care of one American owner, Jerry Lee, since 1969. This DB5, no. 1486, was driven by Sean Connery in both Goldfinger and Thunderball but originally had none of the gadgets fitted to its sister car. It was intended as a stand-in for scenes where it was too risky to use the Effects Car and was referred to as the Road Car, since it was the first choice for action shots. The Road Car was road-registered as FMP 7B but, of course, dummied-up as BMT 216A for filming.
Generally, the Effects Car was brought in for close-ups or shots where the gadgets were being deployed – but the Road Car gets its own moment in the spotlight in the pre-title sequence of Thunderball, where Bond escapes from a French chteau by means of personal jet-pack (of course) and has to stow it quickly in the boot of his DB5. If he’d been using the Effects Car, he would have had a slight problem trying to stuff his jet-pack into the space occupied by a large, retractable, bulletproof screen...
Shortly after this, the Road Car was equipped with the same extras fitted to the Effects Car, which was retired from film use and moved onto the promotional circuit. Now that the Effects Car is missing, presumably dumped or scrapped, Jerry Lee’s DB5 is undoubtedly the Most Valuable Bond Car in the World.
As for the other mechanical co-stars from Goldfinger, the 1937 Rolls-Royce Phantom III driven by Oddjob was auctioned along with the DB5 Effects Car by Sothebys in 1986. But does anyone know what happened to the white Mustang driven by Tilly Masterson? It was brought into the UK for a publicity shoot but was never seen again. Is it still out there, another ‘Bond car’ waiting to be discovered?
wacko
